I'm controlling a female first-person avatar who's walking down a suburban street, gun in hand. A man hurls a catcall "I'm not hungry today, but I'd love to eat you." The avatar shoots him. Another man shouts a similar line. My avatar shoots him too. And so it goes.

Hey Baby may be the weirdest game I've ever played. If you can call it a game. Its creator Suyin Looui describes it as "a conversation catalyst . . . a satirical project, based heavily as a spoof on the visual aesthetics and concept of games such as GTA" which reflects on the "history of public spaces as unwelcome or unsafe for women to wander".

Yet the game doesn't quite hit the mark: the graphics are distractingly awkward, the gameplay clumsy. The streets full of nothing but catcalling men don't feel hostile as much as puzzlingly surreal. The two available responses (shoot or "shower with love") are equally unsatisfying. But Hey Baby is just one of a growing number of games more about the message than fun play. In Darfur is Dying you play a family hiding from Janjaweed gunmen while fetching water: it's almost unwinnably hard and, of course, that's the point.

Veteran videogames designer Brenda Brathwaite has created the boardgame Train in which players load passengers into trains – the doors are slightly too small, you have to really push them in – and advance them along tracks. Only once the destination is reached is its name revealed: Auschwitz.

When I first heard about this, it felt borderline offensive. But on reflection I'm glad games are tackling such big issues, even awkwardly. Train has moved some players to tears – if that doesn't make games art I don't know what does.